h the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about
him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her
a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well
suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself
about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go
to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but
no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found
himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that
mysterious conclave.

It was mysterious. Nan herself had made it so. Her face, on Dick's
going, had fallen into a grave repose, and she turned at once to Raven,
saying:

"You see, Dick ran in on the way over here, and when he told me you'd
sent for him, I said I'd come along, because I'd got to see you instead.
Was that cheeky? I really have got to. Couldn't the other thing wait?"

"Perfectly well," said Raven, with a ready cheerfulness he was aware she
could not understand. How should she? He had not been in the habit of
troubling Dick, or indeed any one, with his vaporings. He had lived, of
late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no
implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had
promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt
how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous
discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," he bade her. "You in
trouble, dear? You want patriarchal advice?"

Nan might not have heard. She was looking, with a frowning gravity, into
the fire. How should she begin? He saw the question beating about in her
mind and hoped he could give her a lead. But she found the way for
herself. She turned to him with a sudden lovely smile.

"Aunt Anne," she said, "has done something beautiful."

He felt his heart shrinking within him as he combated the ungracious
feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done
with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal
action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his
cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who
had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces
about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in
the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of
recognizing his rel